Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 3, Number 4, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 27 July 1872 — Page 1

THE MAIL?

Office, 3 South 5th Street.

Town-Talk. ,\'T

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LKTTEB TO A YOUNG POLITICIAN. T. T. has observed yoar career with peculiar interest from your debut as a speaker in caucus to the present, and cannot refuse to give vou, and others situated as you are, the lesson ot his experience. There is no road more difficult, not even Jordan, than that of politics, and none is so copiously strewn with tho skeletons of the unfortunate. As T. T. reflects upon the men whom he hits known, even in this town, the distinguished politicians, the eminent "public servants," the labors and agonies of aspirants, be discovers that not only is the road difficult, but that those who seem to possess the best qualifications for success therein, often prove the saddest failures. Ah, the bows, the Rmllep, the smirks, the affected interest, tho lies, the bores, the wasto of soul and body, to which T. T. has seen clever and sensible men submit, to secure political preferment!

Nevertheless it is not surprising that you are fascinated by tho prospect of such a career, because you see only certain external results, and you imagine a groat many more. Indeed the ploasure T. T. has in knowing that you will onter politics, as it is called, is not disturbed by the reflection that you will be bitterly disappointed in many ways. There is nothing more foolish than the air with which one hears people say: "Oh, I know nothing about politics. I get dirty enough without dipping into that cess-pool."

Precisely and our good friend who navH no does his very best to mako it and koop it a cess-pool. If ability, intelligence and refinement will have nothing to do with politics, ignorance and knavery will have everything to do with them. If Sixth street keeps out of politics, tho Hollow Nquaro will ooinn In and take possession. Hero is T. T's old friend Dobbs—Darius Dobbs. He Ih

of tho most prosperous mer

chants in the country. He is a man of truo genius for affairs, and manages his business with a skill which is delightful to witness, and of which tho results are visiblo in a hundred public as well as private ways, llo is proud of being a inorchant-prince. This is the age nml the country oi merchants, and he is one of tho chief. "But politics, my doar T. T." says D.irlus Dobbs,—"politics 1 Why politicians are tho dirtiest knaves going. I dospiso them!"

Darius Dobbs, merchant, speaks of affairs to which Edmund Burke, and Alexander Hamilton, and Bismarck, and Cavour did not disdain to dovote thoir powers, in tho sauio manner in which the aristocracy of Christendom always spoke of merchants two or three hundred yoars ago. No matter for tho reasons. Perhaps it was bocause tho tradors woro of tho race that cruclfiod. That does not disturb the fact, that tho merchants wero scorned.

Now suppose that in some old baroninl castle, say in Front-do-Bumfs, say in Richard Plantngenet's, »onio grave philosopher had laid his h^nd upon the disdainAiIly-shrugging baronial shoulder, and had said:

Oh, Richard! oh, wu» roi! is not the man who carrios tho fruits of the earth from one part of it to another, whose pursuits require peace, and extend civilization, and increase intelligence, as useful a man In his way as ono who gors flashing ofT to Palestine, and strikes blows that resound through the T^orld to wrest tho sepulchre from the infidel?''

JH it possible to imagine that tho taroti or the king oould have seen the subject us wo do? And if not, if with a liugo medieval oath ho had brought his stoelcd hand down upon tho table, and had sworn that merchants wero pigs and cattlo and vermin, would his great oath ami his noisy hand have made them so?

Mou who do the work of the merchant are bonofactors. They are to be praised. They serve us all. But T. T. has no hesitancy in saying to his prosperous mercantile friend D. Dobbs: "Dobbs, you aro as dull as Front-de-Bosur, and your conduct and speech are as ridiculous."

For what ought every honest man in this country to be but a politician? Not a corrupt and falso intriguer, of course, nor a loafer In any sense, nor, above all, an office-seeker bat a man informed of public affairs, and of the principles and policies of parties, so that he can take an intelligent share in the government of which he is a part. Dobbs may be very sure that a country will not govern itself. It will bo governed either by 1U intelligence or by its Ignorance and It will be rnlejj by Ita ignoranco if its Intelligence disdainfully shirks all interest in the subject.

Lot us suppose that, Alexander Hamilton, and Jokn Jay, and James Madi

son, and James Wilson, and James Otis, and Samuel Adams, and George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, and Rufus King, had all said that politics were a dirty mess, and that they would have nothing to do with them, because Philip Freneau and other doubtful men were politicians. In that case they would have deserved as miserable a government as their refusal to mingle in politics would have suffered to arise. There is nothing more unworthy an American citizen than this contempt of an interest in politics. If it be real, tho man does not comprehend the first duty of an American. If it be affected, he is not worthy of the name American. Moreover, we have a right to demand it of each other. When an intelligent and responsible citizen says he despises politics—Dobbs again, for instance—I say to him: ..

Indeed, and what light have you to make me carry your load Don't yon know that if any sailor dodge his work some other sailor has to do it, and that is lust what yoa impose upon T. T., Mr. Dobbs, when you refuse to give your experience and good sense to politics, so far at least as to know for whom you vote and why you vote for him, and so to make and sustain a sound moral public opinion.

T. T. is glad that the young friend whom he now addresses does not mean to follow so pernicious example as Dobbs'. You understand that character and ability count in politics as they count every whero else in human life. Not that all young men should make speeches at caucuses, and strive for a political career. Of course not. Let those only make speeches who can make honest ones, and who have a gift and a wish for speaking. T. T. does not advise you or any man to place his hopes upon political preferment. Public office requires an immense private sacrifice. It is to those who are best fitted for it a truo burden and while nothing is considered more ridiculous than for a man to speak of accepting office in obedience to a sense of duty, nothing is truer than that many of tho best men in office accept it for no reason. They know the sacrifice before they begin thqy know the quality of tho glory that surrounds office they know that the Hesperidean banquet to which they are summoned is a feast-of apples of Sodom.

Doubtless you remember in Homer,the parting of Hector and Andromache? Suck is the farewell that every public man takes of the life of the affections, the true and eternal life of man. Yet it is often a plain duty to take that farewell—often the duty of the unwilling head to wear the heavy orown for which BO many brows are aohing.

You can easily see what T. T.'s counsel is. There is butone talisman in the way upon which you enter, and that is honesty. Discover, first of all, what your real purpose is. Is it to serve yourself, or to serve your country If self is your real object, honesty will be often horribly in the way if the public welfare, honesty will never incommode you. If you are serving yourself In tho ordinary sense, your personal advancement in office and general consideration, you must be everybody's humble servant. Every man who wants a place must feel that you are his friend. You must offend nobody. You must smile meaning smiles upon evory sido—talk very softly, and say very litile. You must remembor that nothing is more dangerous to your chances than the expression of an opinion. Smooth your face, muzzle your tongue, oil your elbow, in order that every body who votes for you may feel that you are his property, his agent, his slave. 4|jv mmtm

Husks and NubbinsV

The question of admitting Female students into the old colleges is being discussed again and the New York Tribune, without argning the merits of the case pro and con, wants to know why a girl does not go to Yassar if she can't gain admission to Yale or Harvard. I suppose the majority of them do go there or somewhere else, but what wo want to know, and what many studious and ambitious girls want to know is, why they can't gain admission to Yale and Harvard. There are plenty of reasons why thoy should be admitted and unless there are as good ones why they should not be, the young ladies will probably persist in demanding that the doors of tho best institutions in tho lsnd shall be opened to them.

The fact is that onr educational system, like a good many other of our systems, is radically at Ault in this respect. Our older colleges were planned after those ol England and when the foundations of Oxford and Cambridge were laid, and for some hundreds of years after, it was accounted little less than a crime for a woman to be able even to reed. Hence it is not singular that in those fomous institutions not the obecorest corner was reserved for the young women of England. And, considering their extreme conserva

tism, against which the logic and eloquence of Seeley were directed in order, if possible, to batter down some of the old Greek and Latin barricades, and allow some fresher and more pertinent knowledge to break in, I say, considering this sacred and fossilized conservatism, it will bo scarcely more singular if female scholarships remain an impossibility to them for a hundred years to come. But in our own country the case is widely different. We have a grand free school system which is unknown in England. Here we place children of both sexes from the time they are six years old and capable of learning tho alphabet, until, passing from grade to grade, the best and brightest of them take diplomas in due coufse from the high school. Up to this point, (which, by the way, is not a small stage on the educational journey, ii all its material has been handled with tolerable thoroughness,) the progress of the two sexes is equal and simultaneous. But what a change now! The boy is going, at the end of vacation, to Yale or Amherst or some other school ot recognized character the girl—well, what does the girl do, anyway? It seems her course is ended there is no place for her to go, at least no place where a girl of some ability and ambition would care to go. There are some fashionable boarding schools for young ladies scattered here and there, but as a general thing the .girl that has mastered well the course of study in any of our city schools will be the botteir tor staying away from them. The best colleges in the land shut their doers against her, but admit with decided pleasure the boy who was several degrees her inferior throughout the whole course ot the common schools. Now why this distinction? Why this wide divergence of paths as the two pass out from the high school, she bearing the palm of honor If it is good to educate boys and girls togethor, why is it not just as good to educate young men and young women together. I should like to know what objections can bo urged against the plan. I should like to hoar tho arguments with which the" learned faculties sustain themselves in their conduct towards the young women of the country.

Some say that a woman's education should be different from a man's, because her part in life is different from his. Well, if the man is to be a shoemaker or a smith, and the woman a cook or a milliner, I admit the force of the argument. But grant me, at the same time, that the one no more than the other needs a collegiate education. The true idea ol education is not to fit one for a certain trade or profession, but to fit him for life. A woman lives as well as a man therefore she needs tho same general education that he does. I once heard an ambitious young student of more than ordinary ability say that he would never marry a woman who was not a classical" graduate of some good college, and he was more than half right. Influences over which the judgment has very little control may have induced him to change his mind beforo this time, but theoretically he was right. An educated man ought to have an educated wife. Ignorance and culture ought not to be yoked together. Thoy may get along cleverly oftentimes, but the one will sacrifice a large portion of his life to the incapacity of his companion. An educated man may love an uneducated woman, or vice versa, but how much more and better they would each love the other if their mental capacities and culture wero something near equal. I argue, therefore, that there is no good cause for, and no justice in, the exclusion of young women from the oldest and highest schools of learning in the country. s«

I have heard youthful students who seemed to be very sensitive lest the dignity of their alma mater should suffer, argue very warmly against the admission of their sisters into the same institutions with themselves. It is vacation and some young cavaliers entertaining these notions may chance to be wfthin the range of The Mail and to have nothing of very weighty Importance on their hands. If so I respectfully solicit a nubbin from them on this subject and promise to husk it if it has only three grains of corn on it! Or, if the fancy please them, I, for my part, will not object to a whole ear, so that there be not too many blasted grains in it.

THE Democracy on last Saturday afternoon put in nomination the following gentlemen for the several county offices

Senator—Richard Dunnigan. Representative*—Isaiah Donhana G. F. Cookerly.

Clerk—Martin Hoi linger. Treasurer— Jas. M. S&nkey. Real Estate Apprairer—George W. Carioo.

Criminal Court Prosecutor—Sant C. Davis. Commissioners—James Kelly, Louis Seeburger.

Coroner—C. Gertameyer. Surveyor—Robert

"Stewed cherries" are about gone, bat "buttered watermelon" will be In next week.

People and Things.

rlllfl O ,• S)

Stokes is said to have spent f7.500 on his trial. No man ^Ver made so' nitich by one invention as Bessemer.

Greeley, thongh a Universalist, believes in tho doctrine of election. Tom. Browne's "meat" has been put aside for Gratz Brown's "cherries.".,'J

John S. Gutheridge is the bravest postmaster in Indiana, He fights mit Greeley.

A Springfield, Masti., banker has bought 200 Greeley fans, to present to his depositors.

A diabolicai hacker-off of cows' tails busies himself in Germentown, Pa., during fly-time. .ft-

Tom Scott says, "Texas on the whole, is about the finest piece of property 1 have yet seen."

One of the Irish delegates to the Baltimore Convention was named O'Possom. He is dead. csusVp*

The headlong porker traverses Evansville at a rapid gait, knocking gaudy pedestrians into the gutters.

Colorado lightning seems to prefer men and other animals to houses. It rarely strikes buildings of any kind.

Nine Arkansas postmasters were recently arrested for mail robbery. Several others took the hint and absconded.

The Youngf Men's Christian Association of Albany is about to establish free baths in that city. Cleanliness is next to godliness.

Yalmesada, the retiring captain general of Cuba, is said to have accumulated a fortune of §2,000,000 during his term of office.

The everlasting bung" is the latest patent. An old tippler tells us he had much rather have some one get up an everlasting barrel—of whisky. btx.

John Wesley used to say: "Ob, how hard it is to be shallow enough for a genteel congregation." But ministers have no difficulty of that kind now.

The Chicago Times says no party lash has for it the slightest terrors. If we remember correctly the lash of a party named Thompson struck terror to its soul.

The Reverand David Swing preaches in a Chicago theatre, but the Chicagoans do not consider it a hanging matter to go and see the Reverend David Swing. ,%yw .'i r.'

Many young men are so improvident that they cannot keep anything but late hours. And there are those who keep these but too well—it being their only stock in trade.

Civilization advances. A negro man named Minotte, a member of the City Council of Columbia, South Carolina, is reported to have won $27,000 recently from Gen. W. J. Wbipper, also a negro, at faro,

A country paper, in speaking of the good things in the village where it is published, says, "We are proud of the impressively solemn appearance of our undertakers. A smiling undertaker is a hideous incubus on the grpyjth of a placo."

A Janesville, Ills., paper doesn't object to a man buying one glass of soda for two ladies, but when he turns up the tumbler and licks out the foam, the aforesaid Janesville paper thinks it is economy carried too far. Too intense, as it were.

A New York ^aper declares that, at tho time he was killed, James Fisk was on the eve of bankruptcy and that his sudden death saved him from becoming a street loafer. If this is true, the prosecution of Stokes ought to be abandoned at once.

One of the Lafayette papers announces that two young men of that city are about to fight a duel. A duel Involving an irammediate demand for the services of a couple of coroners is about as good a use as you can put some youag men to.

That snubbing of Gen. Sherman of which we read will probably turn oat to be idle gossip. The General's letters home indicate that he has been delighted with his trip, and feels gratpful for the marks of respect with which he has been receiyed in Germany and elsewhere.

The cable message that was to announce to the waiting millions of Europe the nomination of Horaoe Greeley for the Presidency suffered a sad sea change on its way. The^astonisbed readers of the foreign press saw, with a bewildered smile, that the Democratic candidate was named "Florence Gapleg." And such is fame.

Oakey Hall is not the beetof witnesses, but he testifier as follows to Horace Greeley's love of oddity: "I myself saw him in I860, in Chicago, while in company with two other gentleman, who also laughed at him, go behind the door of the barber's shop In the hotel and cajefcilly adjust his trousers in the inside Qf his. boots."

Feminitems.

Mrs. C. H. Ballou, of Sarariac, weighs $78 pounds. Leutner, like Nillson, was once a juvenile street singer.

Nowadays kitchen girls are termed "young ladies of the lower parlor.,' The Professor of Agricultural Science in Iowa College is a woman—Mrs. Tupper.

Olive Logan's new lecture for the coming season is on "Successful People."

Mrs. Horace Greeley is hopelessly ill of a disease that forbids all freedom of locomotion. v:.'.

It is an error to imagine that women talk more than men. They're listened to more, that's sll.

Carrie Moore, of San Francisco, won a half mile velocipede race in two minutes and one second. -a

The government employs upward of three thousand women in the different departments in Washington.

The board of trustees of Delaware college have thrown open the doors of that institution to young women.

The ladies give as a reason for marrying for money that they so seldom see anything else in a man worth having.

Emma G. Hayes has been voted a pair of gold bracelets, as the most popular young woman of Salmon Falls, N. H.

Anna C. Brackett, of the St. Louis normal school, gets the highest salary ($2,800) paid to a female teacher in the United States.

Royal honors Were paid to pretty little Nellie Grant on her recent visit to the House of Lords. They took the covers oft the chairs!

General Ruger has put his foot down on West Point flirtations. He has a poor opinion of women as an element in military disipline.

Miss Jane Barsack of Crete, Jl/aine, recenlty awoke in the morning and found a three-foot rattlesnake in her bed. She got up with alacrity.

The Woman's Journal after announcing that a negro has been elected a bishop of the Methodist church vehemently asks: "Why not a woman."

According to the French journals, Mile. Nillson's marriage takes place today at St. George's, Hanover square. The happy man is M. Auguste Rouzeaud.

The Countess de Blanchers Has Jlist had the cross of the legion of honor conferred on her. She fought with a musket like a common soldier at the combat of Patas, near Orleans.

A nervous young lady in a Peoria church became seasick on Sunday last from the effect produced by the continuous swaying of fans all around her, and had to be taken from the building.

Miss Ransom, of Cleveland, Ohio has finished a most successful ftill-length portrait of Gen. Thomas. Miss Ransom painted the first picture ever bought by the Government that was painted by a woman.

Josie Mansfield, who was at Saiatoga this week to testify in the Barnard impeachment case, was refused admittance to Grand Union Hotel. The world does move when such reports come to us from this hot bed of fashionable licentiousness.

A lady on East Ohio street was astonished yesterday to find her chignon partially decomposed and wormy, and the back part of her head diseased, in consequence. She was compelled to submit to a regular shaving process, and now mourns the loss of the greater part of her natural hair. Think of it! Maggots! Ugh!—[Ind. News.

Evansville young ladies whon then tiro of the attentions of a beau gently Insinuate a bunch of fire-crackers beneath his coat skirts, and apply a lucifer. A young man they recently treated thus, loaped a ten foot fcnce into the arms of a policeman, and pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly rather than tell what allod him.

Susan B. Anthony and her women followers are on tho war path against the Chappaqua wood choppr. She intimates that though he carries a little hatchet be is not abov telling a few lies —against women. In a public appeal to the women of the United States she goes at him with teeth and toenails and says the friends of women are to be found in the Republican party and not among the Democratic or Liberal Chappaquacks.

The wash-women of London have struck for higher wages. Whereas, they have hitherto been washing from eight A.M. until nine P. X.without beer for two shillings and sixpence a day, they now demand thrie riillings snd beer for working from eight A. x. to eight p. x. If employers hold out against their demands the consequences will be unpleasant, and the demand for paper substitutes for linen will largely increase.*

Connubialities.

Young ladies define flirtation nOW-a-days to be "attention without intention."

A bad marriage is liko an electric machine it makes you dance, and you can't let go.

Indianapolis is Becoming notorious« for forced marriages, no less than three have taken place within a fortnight.

Widow picnics are held in Ohio. If a man appears on such occasions, they all rush for him, and he is glad to escape with his life.

Spinks told his wife that she could have all the Dolly Varden things she wanted, or anew piano. He says nowthat .the piano would have been cheaper. -V'-'

A Detroit paper says that Mr. George Barrell committed suicide because of' disappointment in a love affair. He couldn't bear the thought of remaining a single Barrell.

A Minnesota sheriff kindly allowed a convict to step outside the penitentiary a moment to kiss his wife, and the family tie proved so strong that he. has not yet returned,

Paris has a formally constituted Mormon society. Barring the formality of "sealing," however, the new system makes no material alteration in the social customs of the Parisians.

Tompkins, who is terrible lien-peck-,? ed, says that the greatest miss-take he ever made in his life was on his wedding day. His wife denies it, and says| it was she who was miss-led.? i' 0:-

Two sisters have eloped from Berlin, Prussia, with a young man whom they» are both in love with and whom they.1 both intend to marry when they reach* Salt Lake, which is their destination.

Spinks is not going to do any more in conundrum?. He asked his wifo why he was like a donkey, and sbo said because he was born so, and hess says the answer is very different from that.

A Cynthiana father has furnished his daughter with a music-box which^: plays "Home, Sweet Home," at 11 r.' M., priclsely. The beauxs are all gone, and the house closcd up in fivo minutes alter.

A wedding was dashod in Alabama recently by tho bride taking French leave just beforo tho ceremony. Any one who may have had a reprieve read to him, as he was standing on the scaffold, can form some idoa how tho bride-, groom felt.

A youthful Danbury lover who sang and played before his young lady's house for two mortal hours, was electrified after a short pause by a cordial "thank you," gracofully pronounced by the "other follow," who appeared at the window, fc'

A cynic suggests that the marrying a deceased wife's sister implies either that the husband has treated bis first wife very kindly or cruelly. If kindly the sister wishes to experience the samo treatment it cruelly to avenge it.

A Maryland woman who has been bereft of speech for over five years, suddenly recovered her voice last Sunday in church. She thinks It a special miracle from heaven in her behalf, but her husband—well, men nlwnys are unbelieving wretches.

The Eastern papers publish the following note from an unhappy widower to an undertaker Sur—my Waif is ded and Wonts to bo berried tormorrow, At wonor klok. nose walr to dig the Hole—bi the sido Of my too Other waifs—Let it bo deep! is

The Boston Courier says: "A thrifty' citizen effected insuranco on tho life of his wifo to the amount of 910,000 tho, other day, took a box of the little red Maryland plums, and enjoyed a wholn evening in watching^bis wife eat them. His enterprise has its reward. Deducting $298 for funeral expenses, ho is now $9,702 richer than ho was a week ago."

Quite a sensation was occasioned at Evansville last week on the occasion of a black man being forced by law and also contrary to law to marry a whito woman. The names of the parties aro William Powell and Martha Rush. Martha had a warrant issued for Powell's arrest, on a criminal charge, and the Justice of the Peace gave Powell bis choice between marrying tho "whito trash" or being committed to prison for an Indefinite period. He chose the former as being the least of two evils.

The wife of the Superintendent of Schools of Almakee county, Michigan, publishes the following spicy notice at Lansing "Whereas, my husband, T. F. Healey, has without just cause or provocation, voluntarily deserted my bed and board, and is spending all his time in Tisltlng the female teachers of this county now, this is to caution tho public, and especially the females abovo mentioned, not to harbor or credit him, as I will pay no debts of bis contracting." Mr. Healey was. doubtless a highly pleased husband when ho resd the notice, and the schoolma'ams will henceforth be particularly fond oC bis society.